EDITOR’S NOTE: First in a weekly series profiling the candidates for governor.

Ask him to characterize his penchant for public service, and Scott Angelle will tell you he’s a “fighter,” a “bottom-up” leader who has scaled the government ladder from parish leadership to executive levels of state government.

The governorship? It’s a next step in a political ascendancy at a time when the state needs a new way of leadership — his way of leadership, said Angelle, R-Breaux Bridge.

But in a field that’s crowded with candidates with weighty resumes, Angelle has plenty of credentials of his own. The Breaux Bridge native, 53, served briefly as an interim lieutenant governor under Bobby Jindal and for eight years was secretary of the Department of Natural Resources. He currently serves on the Public Service Commission.

Leadership from

an early age

Angelle started his public service career at 25 on the St. Martin Parish Police Jury, served St. Martin as its first parish president and has worked both as a land man in the oil and gas industry and as vice president of Huval Cos. in Lafayette.

His passion for public service comes from within the family home. His father, J. Burton Angelle, served in the state House of Representatives and as secretary of the of Wildlife and Fisheries under former Gov. Edwin Edwards. Among legislation he helped promote: creation of the Council on Development of French in Louisiana.

The younger Angelle, seventh of nine children, said he needed to develop some skills in French in his first job on the parish police jury. There, some motions were made in French with the intention to keep non-French speakers from understanding what was going on, he said. Angelle said he learned enough French to know when people were speaking poorly of him.

Service in Breaux Bridge, where he grew up, came naturally. He said he loved life in that small town in St. Martin Parish, where he played ball with friends, attended local schools and sat on the bench for the high school basketball team. “I sat on the bench so long,” he said, “you could have sold me as a 2-by-4.”

Heartbreak and

what it taught him

Blessed with an ebullient nature, he suffered some heartbreak in that small town, as well. On May 2, 1983, he was at college at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, where he was a senior. He’d finished up his exams that day and instead of driving home with his younger sister, Cathy, a nursing student, he gave her his car keys and went fishing with a friend.

En route home, he said, her car apparently crossed the center line and collided with an 18-wheeler. She was killed instantly. Angelle later came upon the wreck scene and called his father, who met him at the scene, and told him, “Come on, we got to tell your mom.”

What followed, Angelle said, was a lesson in faith that he has carried with him since. When his mother learned of his sister’s death, she dropped to her knees and prayed, “Thank you, Jesus. Two children left the house today, and you were kind enough to send one back.”

“I was standing on the shoulders of my mom that day,” he said.

The tragedy taught him how fragile life is, Angelle said. “One day, I have a beautiful, bubbly sister; the next day, I’m a pallbearer.

“Tragedy is always around the corner,” he said. “We have to be strong for one another.”

Standing up for Louisiana

Angelle said one of his proudest moments in public service exemplified showing strength for others after the federal government shut down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving thousands of oil and gas industry workers out of work. The governor made him the point man for getting the government moratorium, imposed after the Deepwater Horizon tragedy of 2010, lifted.

Angelle said the moratorium made little sense to him. Recalling his own battle cry that summer, he said the moratorium barely affected those who held stock in Exxon and Chevron. But, he said, the moratorium “affected Boudreaux and Thibodeaux” and tens of thousands of everyday Louisianians working jobs in the Oil Patch.

“With one stroke of the pen,” Angelle said, “the government attempted to shut down a way of life.”

Angelle said he was unsure what tactics might work, but he said he knew Louisiana needed a fighter to get the moratorium lifted. Part of that was expressed when he spoke before a some 12,000 people at a rally at the Cajundome. Part of that was carried out in quiet negotiations with the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

In the latter efforts, Angelle said, Louisiana caught a break: BSEE’s new chief of staff, the man with whom Angelle would have to negotiate, was Tommy Lillie — a Breaux Bridge native.

“With 320 million people in the country, he gets hired as chief of staff? That was spiritual, bro,” Angelle said of that happy circumstance. “Lillie was loyal to his employer, but it was nice to have someone in Washington who could understand my accent.”

The moratorium was lifted several weeks ahead of schedule, a boon to the oil industry and its workforce.

A local guy who

‘never changed’

Part of his political success, Angelle says, has been his ability to work with all people. He describes the governorship as the position sitting at the “intersection of policy and people,” and believes he’s the right guy to work that intersection.

State Sen. Fred Mills, R-Parks, a lifelong friend, said Angelle is a charismatic leader with the capacity to see, long term, the state’s successful future. Mills said Angelle is also well equipped for bringing disparate groups of people together, for forging coalitions. He’s had a front-seat view of Angelle’s leadership in action. The two grew up as neighbors near the corner of Berard and Ledoux streets in Breaux Bridge, a neighborhood on a dead-end street where about 40 neighborhood children lived.

“There’s nobody like Scott. My dad and his dad were best friends; their businesses were next store to each other.

“He was then just as he is now. He never changed. He is unbelievably outgoing, charitable, a personality.”

The two have served at auctions for schools and charities over the last 20 years, worked together in myriad campaigns and, in 2013, worked in a pro-life public campaign.

“As a political leader, he has an extremely keen vision for what’s next,” Mills said. “It’s hard to articulate it, but he can see the big picture over a long length of time. Not only does he have vision, he can implement things. Somehow, some way, he can build consensus among public officials and the electorate.”

Mills said as parish president, Angelle took it upon himself to promote and bring to fruition a road improvements that was desperately needed but long-delayed. He pitched the idea to the parish council, demonstrated its economic value to the area and went neighborhood to neighborhood to sell the idea.

“He went to about 60 neighborhood forums, used poster board to say how much it would take, what it would accomplish. It was magical. He faced opposition, he faced supporters. He went to the bonding attorney and said he wanted people to know what they are paying for.”

The campaign worked.

Angelle: Challenges,

goals to meet

Angelle said he’s got the best job he ever wanted — husband to his wife, Dianne, and father to his five children, all of whom grew up in Breaux Bridge. Even when he served in Baton Rouge, he lived in his hometown.

But as governor, he said, he’s got goals he wants to promote — among them, to ensure workforce training is available that will help match up the state’s unemployed or underemployed with the influx of good jobs now available and unfilled in Louisiana. That, he said, is a passion because he’s seen the need not only in Breaux Bridge, but around the state.

He said wants the state to shore up its finances, to improve its roads, to be fair in taxation.